I have some photos on Poster 11 to show you this new strain of rats. On the left side is a normal rat. The right side is the new strain. You can see how impressive the arthritis is on the wrist, on the upper right. There are also red scaling skin lesions. On the bottom you can see how beautifully transparent the nails are of a normal animal on the left. On the right are changes in the nails, which are thickening and scaling and redness that you see typically in humans on young men who have either psoriatic arthritis or Reiter's disease. When this was presented to us at a meeting in Seattle in October, it was just mindboggling. What this accomplishes is to show for certain that genetics is playing an essential role in causing these diseases. We now have to find how this all comes about, how the gene causes the disease, and then we will have a chance to block it. Mr. Chairman, we have had advances in several other diseases, all important, such as: scleroderma, osteogenesis imperfecta, epidermolysis bullosa, sports medicine and exercise physiology, alopecia areata and psoriasis and, of course, in lupus. Lupus is an important disease of young women for which we have the privilege of being the lead institute. We are supporting a great deal of research in lupus. We are also supporting an ongoing task force to develop educational strategies for lupus in minority populations. Lupus occurs nine times more frequently in young women than in young men. Moreover, black women have lupus three times more frequently than do white women and more severely. We are supporting research to find out why these differences occur. At the same time we are trying to develop a whole strategy of educational programs for lupus patients, modeled after the highly successful anti-hypertension program that was developed in the Heart Institute and to get young black women to care as early as possible. Poster 12 is an example of a booklet that we have developed for an instructive kit. This program is going to be launched this summer. We are also developing videos. We are pleased to share this initiative on lupus with you. Lastly, we are very pleased to report to you that we are well ahead of schedule on the national research plan for NIAMS. The national plan, as you have been told, is to expand and intensify and coordinate all of our research activities. We had an extraordinary productive national task force that was convened in February, assembling over 140 of our scientific and academic leaders throughout the nation in all of our diverse disciplines. They met for an intensive three and a half days. They met first in five science panels shown on Poster 13 with much advanced preparation. National Plan Science Panels • Arthritis • Muscle Biology • Bone Biology and Bone Diseases • Musculoskeletal Diseases • Skin Diseases POSTER 13 They catalogued in detail our research accomplishments in recent years that you helped us support. The major assignment was to formulate and develop opportunities and directions for future research. Then, the entire group was redeployed into the nine cross-cutting issues panels, as you can see here on Poster 14, to address these issues. |